


Harbor

by hickorysleeve



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Illness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tony Stark being not a huge bitch, a little bit angsty, sort of deals with dissociative issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hickorysleeve/pseuds/hickorysleeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even a stray dog will steal a morsel from time to time</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harbor

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by RPs with the girlfriend, but the fic idea wouldn't leave me alone.

The Winter Soldier is like a stray cat or dog, hedging around after Steve has exhausted his leads and comes back to DC, where he can still manage to hide himself under baseball caps and fake glasses and the stoop of his shoulders.  He’s like a stray animal, watching from a distance and Steve spots him out of the corner of his eye from time to time, a glint of hair or metal or the smell of leather.  He starts to leave things out for him on the terrace of his apartment—a new apartment, HYDRA destroyed the other during the whole mess of things.  Some times, the things stay for days or weeks or until there’s rot on them; some times, they disappear within minutes.  Food doesn’t leave, even if Steve makes a point of cooking it on a little hibachi grill Sam gave him, aware of eyes on him, even if Steve eats it himself, even if it’s sealed.  That, more than anything else, worries Steve, because even a stray dog will steal a morsel to eat from time to time.

One time, he goes out to the grocery for himself.  When he returns, the terrace door is open and the noise of the shower alerts him that the Winter Soldier has his guard down far enough that he left these clues for him—or smart enough to leave these clues, so Steve isn’t surprised that he’s here.  But the shower runs and runs, until Steve is sure that the hot water has run out, until he’s sure there’s so much condensation in the bathroom that it will mildew.  When the Winter Soldier comes out, he does it sneaking, trying to disappear as if he were never there.

"Stay," Steve says, and it’s plaintive, but the Winter Soldier freezes like it were a barked order, and that hurts Steve, right in the gut.  "Please," he amends, but the damage is done this time, he thinks.

He makes a small plate of food for the Winter Soldier, sits at his table and eats it himself.  The metal arm is tarnished and sluggish and seems to constantly recalibrate.  Steve wonders if it hurts him, but doesn’t dare ask.  The Winter Soldier is quiet, monosyballic when he does speak, and all Steve can do is quietly offer his home, his open door, in hopes that the stray will come inside for at least a little while—the weather is starting to turn, it will be fall soon and then the nights will be cold.

The cold, it seems, is the only thing that gets the Winter Soldier to speak honestly.  ”The cold never hurt me,” he says.  ”I can sleep, when it’s cold.”

Dread leaks through Steve.  He looks at the Winter Soldier with sad, careful eyes, and the Winter Soldier looks back at him silently.

"Whoever you’re looking for," he says, and then pauses.  His right hand makes a fist, but he can’t do it with his left.  "Whoever he is, he’s dead.  He’s not here."

"That might be," Sam agrees.  "At least let me try and clean up your arm a little bit."

That becomes something of a routine.  As fall comes over DC and Steve’s little neighborhood in Virginia, the Winter Soldier starts to occasionally sleep on the terrace or even come inside if Steve has gone down for the night; he is almost always gone by the morning.  He only lets Steve touch him when Steve offers to clean the arm.  Steve knows he’s eating, because he has to buy more groceries, or buy them more regularly, but he rarely, if ever, sees the Winter Soldier eat.

One evening, around Thanksgiving, Steve comes home from spending the day with Sam and the Winter Soldier is sitting on his couch.  His eyes are glassy and his hair lank, past his shoulders now.  He’s sluggish and doesn’t move when Steve comes in, which is Steve’s first clue that something is terribly wrong.

"James?"  He’s been trying to use the Winter Soldier’s christian name more often than his nickname, to ease him into memories, perhaps, or to humanize him generally; and besides, James is a generic enough name that it doesn’t cause the Winter Soldier to frown and inform Steve that  _there’s no one here by that name_.

But the Winter Soldier only barely reacts to the noise Steve makes, telegraphic in his movements toward him.  When he sits beside him, the Winter Soldier does not move, as he has all the other times before.  Steve touches his right hand, and is shocked by how warm he is.

"You’re burning up."

"I’m fine," he says sluggishly, blinking and staring into the middle distance.

Steve gets up and makes him soup quickly.  The Winter Soldier holds it on his metal palm after physically moving it into place, a grimace crossing his eyes when he does—something Steve has never seen—but does not eat for several long beats.  Steve sits there, watching him nervously, before he grabs his cellphone.

"Please, James, I’m going to call a friend.  At least for the arm.  It shouldn’t be causing you pain."

The Winter Soldier makes a noise that’s somewhere between laughter and acquiescence.  Steve hurries into his bedroom, dialing Tony Stark on the way.

It takes a few rings for Tony to answer.

"Well if isn’t my favorite chorus girl," he says, chipper and sarcastic as always, and at least that hasn’t changed.  "What can I do for you, Spangles?"

"I need your help with a mechanical issue."

"Of course you do."

"Are you at the Tower, in New York?"

Tony’s quiet for a second.  ”Yeah, I am…”

"Alright.  I’m going to try and get there as quickly as possible."

"Whoa," Tony objects.  "Whoa there, hold your horses, Miss America, do I get any say in this?  Do I even get to know why you’re coming up to grace me with your hyper-patriotic self?"

"I think there’s a train that goes from Washington to Manhattan, right?"

“ _Steve_ ,” Tony says, and it makes Steve stop, because he sounds like Howard when he says that, and Steve isn’t sure if Tony has ever called him by his christian name before.  They’re both quiet a moment.  ”What’s going on?”

"I’ll explain when I get there."

It takes a bit of effort and cajoling to get the Winter Soldier to eat the soup so he’s a bit more cognizent of his surroundings.  Steve helps him bundle his hair into a sloppy bun and tucks it under one of his baseball caps, and then throws a peacoat he bought recently over the Winter Soldier’s shoulders; it’s too big for him, and he snuggles into the shoulders silently.  He hurries them to the train station, buys them two tickets, and tucks the Winter Soldier away in a corner to watch the countryside while he sits on the outside and refuses to let anyone else come too near.

He remembers being young and Bucky getting whopping cough and being barred from seeing him from the first rattling wheeze until they were all absolutely positive that he’d recovered from it.  He remembers lingering outside Bucky’s window and looking in on him, lethargic and wheezing in bed, covered in sweat; and how, when Bucky spotted him, he smiled despite the fever and the couch.  Quietly, he tells the Winter Soldier of this memory, carefully framing it as his own and not one that might share.

The Winter Soldier is quiet for a bit when Steve is done with the story, and then nudges Steve with his right elbow.  ”I haven’t got a cough this time.”

It’s as close as he’s come, since he started appearing on the terrace, to saying he might be something remotely similar to Bucky, and it makes Steve want to make sure he’s all right even more.

It takes almost three and a half hours to get to Manhattan, which is three and a half hours too long, by Steve’s estimation.  The Winter Soldier is starting to get jumpy about all the people, but Steve holds his wrist gently, ignoring how his skin burns terribly.  When they approach the tower, a large man that Steve has never seen before comes out to meet them; he offers a hand to shake Steve’s.

"Happy Hogan," the man says.  "I’m Mister Stark’s bodyguard.  He told me you would be coming.  Who’s your friend?"

"The mechanical issue," the Winter Soldier quips, and Steve can’t help a tiny, pathetic laugh at the lacing sarcasm.  Happy looks at him curiously, but then shrugs and leads them into the Stark Tower.

They head down in levels, rather than up, like Steve expected.  The Winter Soldier stays close to Steve, either too sick to bother with his nerves or just finding Steve the most familiar thing.  When the elevator comes to a stop, they get off the elevator—Happy doesn’t.  He smiles and tells them which door leads to the workshop, and Steve leads the way.

Tony answers the door with a steak of grease on his nose.

"And here I was, hoping you’d do the nurses outfit for your house call.  Come on, Rogers, you’re letting down on your upstanding forties upbringing."

"I was brought up in the twenties and thirties," Steve says, and he guides the Winter Soldier into the workshop.

It doesn’t work very well.  The sight of the machinery, or something else, sets him off, and he’s backing toward the door as quickly as possible while trying to keep everything in his sights.  Tony freezes.  Steve reaches for him, but Tony grabs him, stopping him from moving as well—which is good, because on second glance, Steve can see the cornered animal look in the Winter Soldier’s eyes.

Tony moves slowly, grabbing one of his tool kits.  He doesn’t speak to his robots—he doesn’t speak at all.  With the Winter Soldier watching, he unpacks the tools and lines them up.

"Hey, Steve," he says nonchalantly, "why don’t you go up to the ground floor and have Happy show you where the guest lounge is.  There’s a coffee machine in there.  I take mine black, okay?"

Steve doesn’t want to take orders from this guy, doesn’t want to leave the Winter Soldier alone with him.  But he nods, and the Winter Soldier moves away from the door slowly, his back still to the wall, as Steve steps out.

On the ground floor, Happy looks up from his newspaper.  Steve glances at it, and points at his crossword.

"It’s Foucault," he says softly.  "Mister Stark said there was a guest lounge and a coffee machine?"

"Sure thing," Happy says.

He makes small talk, and Steve wonders if Tony had it planned like this, had somehow known who Steve was bringing.  It wouldn’t surprise Steve too much, he realizes.  He doesn’t bring Tony the coffee, though he worries as time drags on.

It’s creeping up on midnight when Tony comes into the lounge.  He frowns at Steve a little.

"I just spent eight hours on your little android boyfriend and you don’t even bring me coffee?  I’m offended."

"How is he?"  Steve doesn’t care for the quip or the implication, but it isn’t the first he’s heard of it, and so he lets it slide.

"He has some metal fatigue, and whatever alloy they used for it is some cheap-shit Russian alloy that’s leaking into his bloodstream."  Steve’s heart pounds up into his throat.  Steve brews them a new pot of coffee.  "Lucky for you, I have practice with metal poisonings.  He’s resting right now.  But, seriously, where do you scrape these guys up, Rogers?  Are you just trawling online personal ads for broken little puppy dogs?"

Steve sits down, heavily, staring into his coffee cup.

"Can I see him?"

"Yeah, I put him upstairs on one of the residence floors."  Tony hands Steve a keycard.  "Nineteen.  It’s the suite on the left.  He should be sleeping—and if he’s not, kick his ass for me, because he  _should_  be sleeping.”

The Winter Soldier is, in fact, not sleeping, but he’s at least in bed.  He smiles the tiniest bit at Steve; it doesn’t quite meet his eyes, but it’s the most Steve has seen from him, expressions-wise, in a long time.

"Hey," Steve breathes, and sits on the side of the bed to brush his hair off his forehead.  "How are you feeling?"

"The stuff Stark gave me to drink tasted like grass clippings," he says.

Steve looks down and sees that the metal arm has been removed entirely.  He gulps a little.  The Winter Soldier follows his gaze and then shrugs.

"He said he’d get me a new one."  There is something that is not just acceptance in that statement, something that might be trust, and it makes Steve smile a little and nod.

"Hey, James?"

"Hm?"

Steve is quiet a moment and then kisses his forehead.  ”Nothing, get some sleep, okay?”

"Okay."  And for once, there is no finality of accepting an order, and Steve thinks that maybe, his friend is on the mend.


End file.
